Birmingham's own Ruth Lindsay and friends will be putting on a special show celebrating traditional Irish music for St Patrick's Day!

Ruth is a fiddle player with specialisms in traditional Irish and Scottish music as well as having a degree in Classical music from Birmingham Conservatoire. She performs extensively as a folk fiddler and theatre musician and is also in demand as a session player and writer/arranger, featuring on many folk recordings and albums.

Having first picked up a violin aged 6 whilst growing up in Scotland, Ruth was introduced to traditional music through her father’s Scottish Dance band. She began playing for dancing herself at the age of 14, and made many appearances on BBC Radio Scotland’s ‘Take The Floor’, as well as featuring on her father’s albums and performing extensively for RSCDS events.

Ruth went on to complete a degree at Birmingham Conservatoire with violin tutors Alexandra Wood and Simon Smith. Whilst gaining considerable experience as a classical solo, orchestral and chamber musician throughout her degree, Ruth continued to explore her passion for traditional folk music, playing and collaborating with many musicians on the folk scene and learning from local musicians in the Irish Session Scene.

Ruth was a founding member of Bonfire Radicals with whom she performed with until 2016. With them she toured the UK, recorded an EP and Album ‘The Albino Peacock’ (Burning Bones Records, 2016) and performed at many of the UK’s major folk festivals. The band have also been featured on BBC Radio 3’s Music Planet with Kathryn Tickell.

In 2018 Ruth began performing with reknowned folk singer Katy Rose Bennett, and consequently became involved in the arranging and writing of Katy’s music. In 2020, Ruth appeared on Katy’s single ‘Where Does it Hurt’ which later featured on an album of the same name. The single was widely received Folk Radio described the single as ‘A sublimely powerful song of great depth’ ‘a superlative string quartet arrangement by Ruth Lindsay.’

She has continued to perform on the folk scene as a fiddle player and in 2025 became the fiddle player in Birmingham’s famous Klezmer, Balkan and British Folk super group The Destroyers.

Ruth has also travelled extensively as a musician and has a keen interest in learning and sharing traditional music whilst visiting other countries. She is particularly interested in music from Ireland, Scotland, Southern and Eastern Europe and Scandinavia.